In contrast to most aspiring performers, folk singer Joan Baez was initially almost afraid of success and popularity. At least that seemed to be the case in 1959, when her appearance at the Newport Folk Festival spawned offers of lucrative recording and tour contracts, which Baez then rejected. But after performing at Newport in 1960, she consented to make her first album of English and American ballads. The venture was an instant success, and within a year she had become the "queen of the folk singers."

A woman of passionate convictions, Baez increasingly enlisted her talents to promoting various causes. By the mid-1960s, she was strongly identified with the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, and the proceeds from many of her concerts went to financing those causes.

Painted from a combination of life sittings and photographs, Russell Hoban's portrait of Baez drew mixed reviews when it ran on the cover of Time in November 1962. One reader said he mistook it for a ghoulish drawing by Charles Addams. Another reader, however, hailed it as "one of the most expressive uses of color and mood ever to appear" on the magazine's cover.